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Comic Book
Comic Book: (com.ik buk), a booklet containing a pictorial comedy or adventure series. Most familiar superheroes began in them. Their publishers took paranormal people from myths and pulps and added tight, circus-like costumes, since they had color printing. In the late 1930s and '40s, they drew millions of readers monthly with hundreds of superheroes on newsstands...By the 1980s, over 3,000 specialty stores sold such magazines. Despite their name, which came from humor strips in newspapers, they typically concerned crime and punishment. Famous Funnies (1934) was the first marketable type. The hundreds of magazines included Captain Marvel Adventures (now called Shazam!), Spy Smasher, The Human Torch, etc. who fought criminals, spies, evil deities, extraterrestrials, etc. during WW II. The World War 2 era comics were called the Golden Age, for their millions of sales. These introduced stereotyped minorities and Axis villains, superhero teams and kid sidekicks. The Cold War versions were called the Silver Age for their lesser sales. They typically had camp (style) stories, Communist villains, alien invasions and superheroes empowered by radiation exposure in Freak Lab Accidents. The 1970s comics were called the Bronze Age and introduced graphic novels, comic book stores, international and integrated super teams, ethnic superheroes and politically or religiously controversial stories about substance abuse, ethnic relations and the occult, based on blaxploitation (1970s action movies with Black protagonists and funk or R&B soundtracks), kung fu and demonic horror movies. The Dark Age of Comics ('80s-90s) was so-called because it depicted dysfunctional, paramilitary and lethal superheroes and villains, based on '80s action, neo-noir, ninja, cyberpunk and erotic thriller movies. It was a revision period, beginning with Crisis Crossovers (emergencies requiring crowds of superheroes). The Modern Age (1996-present) recycles Silver Age stories, only with Crisis Crossovers, graphic violence and sex, like Bronze and Dark Age comics. New stories tend to have LGBT weddings, alternate worlds, evil counterparts and ethnic successors. Retcons (rewritten character histories) are common (Guralink; Rovin, 1985; Saffel, 1999; Steinbrunner & Penzler, 1976; Sullivan, 1986; TV Tropes Wiki, 2006-19). '80s Renown.png|'80s Renown '90s BBW Renown.jpg|'90s BBW Renown Darla's pictures-6-15-2017 595.jpg|'90s Fascinator Bmup1p12.jpg In Brother Muscle: * Freddy Hartmann chose his code name, Brother Muscle, while reading his comic book collection and brainstorming on a Sunday morning, after nightclubbing in drag with Gay/Lesbian Group at the Rave Culture Club Acid. * In Renown & Fascinator, the proposed revised series, little Natasha Horner (Ultraperson) designed her Renown costume and chose her code name while reading her comic book collection and her parents' thesaurus during the '80s, when she first used her alien powers to defend herself from a Sexual Assault attempt by her C. Eckhart Elementary School classmates on a school bus. * In The Nineties, Darryl Frederick Hartmann (Brother Muscle), a comic book collector since grade school in the '80s, chose the Fascinator code name and costume partly from his collection and partly from a Star Trek quote by Mr. Spock. He even created a mansion, wealthy family and Elaborate Underground Base, like Batman's, with his Reality Warping. His father, Visiting Divorced Dad Joseph Vincent Hartmann, was an abusive Jock Dad, who beat his Nerd Son for his sedentary hobbies, such as reading comics. He said "that comic book *$@%&+' ll get your punk *#$%@ killed in high school!," because Darryl was a geek, autistic, bisexual, transgender and a Bully Hunter and his schools were mostly Inner City Schools, with Delinquents and Gang Bangers, armed with Sinister Switchblade and assault weapons. He forced Darryl to do boot camp exercises and read his muscle, martial arts and mercenary periodicals, to "make a man out of him." His own "Hit 'em back" advice, mercenary and martial arts magazines and Darryl's comics inspired his son to retaliate against bullies, injuring many, from kindergarten to high school. Joe and his equally abusive Education Mama ex-wife Charlene Josephine Hartmann, both '80s Yuppie (1960s activists turned '80s business people) executives, had to take off from their business meetings, "three-martini lunches," wild office parties or after-work golf games, to withdraw their son Darryl from St. Christopher Catholic School, because a Jerk Jock Bully pulled a knife on him in a schoolyard brawl. They enrolled him there, to protect him from that, because his nearest middle school was nicknamed "Piney Box Middle School," for its frequent gang-related school shootings. Darryl then transferred to the high-crime James A. Garfield "Gunfield" High. It was his parents' alma mater during the '60s. The Southside Skulls youth gang was organized there in the '70s. A Mass Murder, Freak Lab Accident and best friend Natasha's alien Power Crystal turned Darryl into a Super Soldier there in the '90s. * Both Natasha and Darryl chose one-word code names and black costumes, because these were Dark Age of Comic Books trends. As Generation X (born 1964-80) children, they frequented comic book shops after school and on weekends, when not playing video games at arcades, playing Dungeons & Dragons or "doctor" with other children, using their computers or watching cable TV at home. During the '80s and '90s, their home city, Los Rios had a violent crime rate of 1000/100,000, like Compton, CA and New York City, due to the Crack Epidemic (widespread smokeable cocaine use) and Mob Wars between rival Aggressive Drug Dealers and between competing Gang Bangers, all selling crack. Since kindergarten, both saw blood puddles, bound corpses piled on freeways and ducked gunfire while commuting to and from school. They politely refused drugs sold by their classmates. Like their comic book role models, Renown and Fascinator fought all the above offenders, starting with the Southside Skulls (Lathan, 2013; 2019; TV Tropes Wiki, 2006-19). Acknowledgements: * Guralink, David E., ed. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language. * Lathan, D.V., Brother Muscle & Ultraperson #1-2 (1993; rev. 1999; publ. 2013), Brother Muscle Wiki (2013-19) * Rovin, Jeff, Encyclopedia of Superheroes (1985) * Saffel, Steve, All About Collecting Comic Books (1989) * Steinbrunner, Chris & Penzler, Otto, eds, et al, The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976) * Sullivan, Jack, ed., Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) * TV Tropes Wiki (2006-19) Category:Metafiction Category:Media